When I started my car dealership some 20 years ago, I never dreamt that a medical condition might put it at risk. When my grandma left me some money, I decided to put it to good use and I opened my own dealership, as I always wanted to sell cars. And it turned out great. I managed to make quite a nice little business out of it and I am at present employing more than 10 people, counting only sales guys (and girls).
However, some time ago, I think it was six years ago, it almost all went away due to my illness. Namely, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy six years ago and it was quite a strange case.
It was a strange case because this condition usually starts between the ages of 6 and 25. This was also the reason why it took the doctors some time to diagnose it. For a long while they all thought I was depressed or simply exhausted. One doctor thought that I simply suffer from insomnia and that my daytime sleepiness is due to that.
One day all of this changed as I had an episode that the people who were around me at the time described as an epileptic attack. I went stiff in a second and I fell over like a plank, hit my head quite hard in fact.
They say I was lying on the floor for about a minute or two. I told the doctor from the ER that I have been feeling weird lately and that the doctors think I am depressed or insomniac or something like that, thinking about my sleepiness and sleep disturbances. The ER doctor immediately sent me to the sleep specialist and told me it was most likely narcolepsy, complete with cataplexy.It turned out he was right. I told the specialist that I have a business to run and that I have no time for alternative treatments. I needed a solution that is going to work at once. He gave me two solutions. Ritalin for narcolepsy and Xyrem in case I still had cataplexy episodes. It turned out it was the first and the last one. However, I am still taking my Ritalin and I cannot imagine my life without it.
